Tag Archives: lobbying

A Shift in Strategy for Antofagasta’s Twin Metals Project

Leave a reply

Chart from opensecrets.org

I usually post the quarterly lobbying disclosures for Antofagasta’s Twin Metals project on Twitter, but I am taking a social media break. So here’s a quick post about what this quarter’s disclosures show.

Q1 2023 disclosures reflect a change in strategy after the actions taken last year by the Solicitor of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, and the US Forest Service. Lobbying of the executive branch has shifted to the Department of Energy. The focus of the lobbying is now around the energy transition, positioning Twin Metals as “a world-class project to provide the critical metals that a growing and greener world requires.” (That’s from the latest Antofagasta annual report).

It also looks as if the company is off to a slightly more modest start this year, committing a total of $180,000 for the first quarter of 2023. (In 2022, as I noted back in January, Antofagasta spent over 1 million dollars lobbying the US federal government for its project near the Boundary Waters — $1010,000, to be precise. First quarter expenditures were $200,000; second quarter, $290K; Q3, $280K; and Q4, $240K).

Let’s break down that Q1 2023 number.

  • The Daschle Group, the only group that lobbies directly for the Chilean mining company (and not for its Twin Metals US subsidiary), reports $20,000. This is just a retainer: for this quarter, as in the first and fourth quarters of last year, they report no lobbying activity.
  • Brownstein Hyatt continues to command the lion’s share of the Twin Metals lobbying dollars, and with good reason. Former Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt rejoined Brownstein Hyatt after the Trump administration came to its ignominious end; and in 2021 the firm poached Wilmer Hale’s Andrew Spielman, who during the Trump years helped shepherd the Twin Metals project through the agency Bernhardt led. Last year, Brownstein pulled in $490,000 for Twin Metals lobbying; $120,000 of that was billed in Q1 of 2022. In the first quarter of 2023, Brownstein Hyatt reports just a little less for its Twin Metals work: $110,000. The firm lobbied the Senate, the House, and the Department of Energy for “supporting development of mining a project in Minnesota” [sic].
  • Wilmer Hale may no longer lead the Twin Metals lobbying efforts, but the firm still reports $50,000 for the first quarter of 2023. They  lobbied the Senate and the House on “mining issues.”

Antofagasta’s three lobbying firms may have to take a slight haircut this year, if this first quarter sets the pattern; but things could pick up again, especially if Antofagasta can get a favorable judgment in federal court. Currently, the project faces some enormous administrative and legal hurdles, enough to trigger a $177.6M impairment in Antofagasta’s accounting. But the Group, as Antofagasta likes to refer to itself, appears to be taking the long view. Administrations come and go, priorities shift, rules change, and Antofagasta needs to keep its American friends close.

A New Boundary Waters FOIA Request

Leave a reply

On Tuesday of last week, the Washington, DC-based organization American Oversight filed a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the decision to renew Twin Metals Minnesota’s leases in Superior National Forest, on the edge of the Boundary Waters.

This March 5th request is much broader in scope than the FOIA request I made back in January of 2017, which has so far yielded about five-thousand pages in documents, with more still to come. Slowly but surely, a picture is coming into focus. American Oversight’s question about “outside influence” can already be answered with an unequivocal yes:

Nonetheless, this new request promises to deepen our understanding of how Interior went about reversing Obama era protections for the Boundary Waters, at whose direction they did so, and why the matter appears to have been a priority for the incoming administration.

Three things intrigue me about American Oversight’s request.

First, it extends from January 20th, 2017 to the present. My request for documents from the Office of the Solicitor runs only to December of 2017, when the Jorjani decision was released. So the new request will take us up to the present, and include actions taken by Interior and USDA in 2018.

Second, American Oversight has asked for any communications on this matter from Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, from their official White House accounts and from their personal ijkfamily.com email domain, and from anyone using their personal email domain. This will help clarify the role Kushner, Trump, and the Trump White House might have played in the Boundary Waters reversal, and what connections, if any, we can draw between their rental of the Luksic-owned Kalorama mansion and the renewal of Antofagasta’s mineral leases. That may involve a foreign emolument. This aspect of the new request also promises to inform a broader American Oversight investigation into Jared and Ivanka’s roles in the administration.

Third, and perhaps most intriguing of all, American Oversight’s request zeroes in on an April 28, 2017 meeting with Wilmer Hale’s Rob Lehman at the Department of the Interior. I added this meeting to the Twin Metals timeline after discovering it on the calendar of Chief of Staff Scott Hommel (which American Oversight obtained back in June of 2018).

A look at the timeline shows that this was an especially busy period for Interior officials working on — or should I say with? — Twin Metals: on April 27th, in preparation for a meeting between Deputy Secretary James Cason and Antofagasta CEO Ivan Arriagada, Raya Treiser of Wilmer Hale forwards some background materials. Among them, the Waxman letter to Solicitor Hillary Tompkins that Interior would use as a blueprint. The very next day, Lehman comes to meet with Kathleen Benedetto, an 11AM meeting. Who else was in the room? We don’t know. We do know that right after that meeting Benedetto briefed her colleagues at the Office of the Solicitor. The purpose of the Benedetto briefing, according to Associate Solicitor Karen Hawbecker, was “to get some feedback from [Benedetto] on the options we’ve identified for reversing action on the Twin Metals decision.”

So by late April, the course appears already set. The options on the table were all for “reversing”; and as if to seal the deal, one week later, Antofagasta CEO Ivan Arriagada and his entourage arrive at the Department of the Interior for a first meeting. What was discussed on that occasion, and whether any assurances were given to Mr. Arriagada, remains unknown. The actions Interior subsequently took speak for themselves.

A Standing Offer to Steve Kornacki

Leave a reply

Last week, Richard Painter tweeted out this clip of an interview he did with NBC’s Steve Kornacki back in April of 2018. At the time, Painter was running against Tina Smith for Al Franken’s senate seat.

Notice what happens just before Kornacki pushes Painter on the credibility of Franken’s accusers — starting around the 1:07 mark here. Painter says that Smith should be “a lot stronger against” Trump on three fronts: first, she should have come out against his trade war; second, she should call for his removal from office, because he is unable to execute his constitutional duties; and

furthermore, we have serious problems in the state of Minnesota where out of state mining interests are coming into our state, large conglomerates, with the support of the Trump administration, seeking to destroy our Boundary Waters and other waterways in the state of Minnesota. Our establishment Democratic, Farm Labor, senators and members of Congress, most of them are not standing up to that. So we need to have — both parties to be fixed; both parties need to be fixed.

Kornacki sums up what he is “hearing”: “I’m hearing trade, I’m hearing impeachment,” and then he rushes headlong into the topic that will dominate the rest of the segment: whether Richard Painter believes Al Franken’s accusers. How is it possible Kornacki didn’t hear the bit about mining interests? It’s all the more remarkable because Painter spent the most time on the mining story, about twice as much time as he did on impeachment, and a lot more time than he did on trade. How could Kornacki simply skip over it? Why no follow up?

The most likely answer is, Kornacki already knew where this interview was heading — back to Al Franken — and the mining story looked like nothing more than a detour. In retrospect, however, it looks as if Kornacki missed a big political story, or several stories, details of which are only now coming to light.

To stick just to the Boundary Waters story for the moment: a foreign mining company and its lobbyists appear to have dictated decisions at the US Department of Interior. As documents obtained through FOIA make clear, these decisions were coordinated at the highest levels of the US government, with USDA, the White House and the State Department all in the loop. And it sure looks as if the fix was in from the very first days of the new administration, with a predetermined outcome guiding the moves federal government officials made behind closed doors, without public input, and with disregard for science, economics, and the law.

I’ve offered to buy Steve Kornacki lunch and walk him through the details of this story. That’s a good faith, standing offer. There is even more at stake here than the just administration of public lands and the protection of waterways. This is also a story about a coordinated effort to sidestep democratic governance and undermine our shared public life. That ought to be of some interest to a national political correspondent for NBC News.

Read other posts about the Boundary Waters Reversal here.

The Architect of the Boundary Waters Reversal

8 Replies
1989 files

“Extrinsic evidence” from the 1980s: one of the files from the Milwaukee District Office of the Bureau of Land Management appended to Waxman’s 2016 letter to Hilary Tompkins.

Principal Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani signed the December 2017 Department of Interior memo that re-opened the door to sulfide mining near the Boundary Waters, but he probably should not be considered the legal architect of the Boundary Waters reversal. That dubious honor appears to belong to Seth P. Waxman. Or at least the key arguments in Jorjani’s memo seem to be largely derived from a letter Waxman wrote on behalf of Twin Metals to Department of Interior Solicitor Hilary Tompkins back in July of 2016.

Waxman’s name may ring a bell. He has had a distinguished legal and political career. Under President Clinton, he served as Solicitor General of the United States. In the last year of the Bush administration, he made oral arguments before the Supreme Court in Boumedienne v. Bush, to uphold habeas corpus rights for Guantanamo detainees. During the Obama years, his name was even floated as a Supreme Court nominee. Waxman is also a partner at WilmerHale, the powerful DC firm that has led both the lobbying and litigation efforts for Antofagasta, Plc in its bid to renew its mineral leases in Superior National Forest.

Waxman sent his 24 page letter to Hilary Tompkins on July 1, 2016. On the same day, he sent a letter to Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell. Those letters are included among Department of Interior documents obtained through FOIA. The letter to Tompkins appears to have been the most widely shared. It was attached to an April 27, 2017 email from Raya B. Treiser of WilmerHale to Cathy Gulac, secretary to James Cason, confirming a May 2nd meeting with Antofagasta CEO Ivan Arriagada at Interior. You can follow it from there as it gets attached to other email exchanges and forwarded around.

HaugrudLawkowski

A handoff from Interior’s Jack Haugrud to a political appointee: Gary Lawkowski, Counselor to the Solicitor. Attached is Seth P. Waxman’s 2016 letter to Solicitor Tompkins.

Waxman’s argument in the letter to Solicitor Tompkins is that Twin Metals has a non-discretionary right to renewal, as dictated by the terms of the leases negotiated by the International Nickel Company and the Bureau of Land Management back in 1966. This is also the conclusion at which Jorjani arrives, and he appears to do so by carefully following Waxman’s lead. Here, I’m going to highlight several places where Waxman’s influence on Jorjani seems undeniable. (To make it easier for others to follow along, I’ve posted the Waxman letter. Jorjani’s memo can be found here.)

To the layman — and I am one, so anything I say here should probably be read in light of that — the very idea of a non-discretionary right to renewal might seem paradoxical, or at least puzzling. Apparently the federal government, and specifically BLM, can “grant” and has twice granted (in 1989 and 2004) the renewal of these mineral leases, but it has no discretion to deny renewal (as long as the company complies with the law). Hobbled, BLM can say yes but not no. Waxman’s argument easily and cleverly explains why this is so. The terms of the 1966 lease, he says, are both “comprehensive” and “unique”, and those unique terms still “govern” (to use the phrase Jorjani prefers) or (in Waxman’s words) “control”:

One of those terms is a right to renew the lease (in fact, to successive renewals). This right is critical to the parties’ overall bargain: The investment required of the lessee under the leases is enormous. But because of recognized operational problems in the area, producing minerals in the short term would have been impossible. The leases thus would serve no rational purpose absent a non-discretionary right to renew; no company would undertake the necessary investment for exploration and development knowing that it could be unilaterally deprived of any ability to recoup that investment. (p. 1)

Of course, it’s possible to think of a rational purpose mineral leases could “thus” serve absent a non-discretionary right to renew. The leases might afford the company an opportunity to explore a mineral resource on public lands within a specified period of time and on certain terms, assess the feasibility of developing the resource, and provide a right to negotiate successive renewals. We can easily imagine circumstances in which the federal government might reserve discretion, and renewal might be contingent on all kinds of things, like changes in environmental conditions, advances in scientific knowledge, evidence of responsible stewardship, or commensurability with other rights. That all sounds perfectly reasonable. There’s no need to insist that a “non-discretionary right” is the only appropriate arrangement, or buy into the view that preserving discretion over renewal confers on government the power to “unilaterally [deprive]” the company of “any ability.”

This is lawyer’s hyperbole, affecting sobriety and marking out an extreme position: the only “rational” course appears to be one that protects the investment of the mining company, from exploration through development. Having entered into a lease agreement with a mining concern, the federal government is now bound to help the company realize a return on its investment. And that would require going way beyond providing incentives. Surrendering all discretion, the government defers entirely to private interests and agrees to relieve the mining company of business risk.

This Extractive Industry First approach is perfectly congruent with Trumpism and its doctrine of Energy Dominance. We see it reflected not just in the Jorjani memo but in some of the changes Ryan Zinke and David Bernhardt brought to the Department of Interior. Perhaps Mr. Waxman is a man ahead of his time — by about a year, it seems. But let’s grant, for the moment, Waxman’s position that this non-discretionary right is indeed the “unique” arrangement the 1966 leases set out, and focus instead on the area where Jorjani’s memo relies most heavily on Waxman: in reaching the conclusion that the 1966 leases “govern.” Here is Jorjani’s brief restatement of Waxman’s argument:

Twin Metals is entitled to a third renewal. First, the renewal terms of the 2004 lease form do not govern. The form is ambiguous, and the intent of the parties to keep operative the terms of the 1966 leases becomes clear once the BLM’s decision files are examined. (p. 8)

Jorjani adds in a footnote (number 38) that Solicitor Tompkins’ memo did not examine this “extrinsic evidence” — 1980s decision files from the BLM’s Milwaukee office, which Waxman attached as exhibits to his letter to Hillary Tomkins — “because of its underlying premise that the 2004 lease forms were unambiguous.” This, too, echoes Waxman, and builds on an argument about ambiguity and how to resolve it that Waxman sets out repeatedly in his 2016 letter to Tompkins: “Because the renewal provision in the 2004 standard forms is ambiguous,” he writes, “extrinsic evidence [namely, the 1989 BLM decision files] must be considered” (pp. 22-3). Jorjani returns to the theme several times: “the meaning of the 2004 leases is ambiguous” (p. 11), but those Milwaukee files from the 1980s clear everything up.

Waxman discusses what should be done in such cases of ambiguity: “Where a provision in a contract is ambiguous, courts resort to extrinsic evidence to resolve the ambiguity by ‘determin[ing] the intent and meaning of the parties” (p. 23). Jorjani is on exactly the same page: “where contract terms are unclear or ambiguous, an examination of extrinsic evidence is appropriate to properly interpret the contract in accordance with the parties’ intent” (p. 10). Waxman maintains that “extrinsic evidence must be considered, and it confirms that the parties’ intent in executing the 2004 forms was to re-confirm that Twin Metals has a non-discretionary right to renew” (p. 3). Jorjani, too, discovers the “intent” of the 1966 parties in the 1989 files:

…the meaning of the 2004 leases is ambiguous. Given this ambiguity, extrinsic evidence beyond the ‘four corners’ of the document may be considered to ascertain the intent of the contracting parties. Examining the decision files of the BLM resolves the ambiguity. The record shows that the BLM renewed the leases in 1989 under the same terms as the 1966 leases, and did so again in 2004. (p. 11)

Though both Jorjani and Waxman seize on the same Milwaukee documents to prove intent, neither entertains the possibility that there might be other extrinsic evidence to consider in this case — to illuminate historical context, help clarify why the Milwaukee office took the actions it did in 1989, or throw into relief the different economic and environmental conditions, or different assumptions about public lands and private industry, that obtain in 1966, 1989, 2004, or for that matter now. This isn’t a historical inquiry, after all: it is, instead, a search for proof of intent that will shore up the mining company’s claim. It’s just a little unsettling to see the vast resources of the Department of Interior being marshaled to that purpose, following the lead of Antofagasta’s counsel.

Let’s go back, once more, to this issue of ambiguity. One of the main reasons why the 2004 leases are ambiguous — and why the 1966 leases control, and why the Milwaukee documents are necessary in the first place — is that the 2004 leases lack what is known as an integration clause. A written contract is “integrated” when the parties consider it to constitute their full and complete agreement. Or, as a Jorjani footnote (49) explains, “Integration clauses, also known as merger clauses, are contract provisions that generally state that the agreement as written constitutes the entire agreement between the parties and supersedes any prior representations.” Jorjani cites Corbin on Contracts for his authority; Waxman, Williston on Contracts: the standard lease forms used in 2004 do not “supersede or annul” the 1966 leases (Waxman, p. 11).

As Waxman states at the outset of his letter, this lack of an integration clause is a point Solicitor Tompkins does not “acknowledge” in her M-Opinion (p. 2). Both Waxman and Jorjanil will go to town on this point.

Waxman:

the Opinion asserts (p.6) that the 2004 standard forms are “complete, integrated documents,” and thus their renewal provision governs the analysis here. In making this assertion, the Opinion does not acknowledge the lack of any integration clause in the 2004 standard forms. (p. 7)

And again:

…the 1966 leases control. The Opinion’s contrary view depends on its assertion (p.6) that the 2004 forms are “integrated” contracts. But they are not; the 2004 forms lack any integration clause (a point the Opinion does not acknowledge), and there is no other basis on which to conclude that the 2004 forms— divorced from the 1966 leases that the parties attached—were integrated contracts. In light of this, the Opinion’s refusal to consider extrinsic evidence conflicts with established law. (p. 2)

Jorjani picks up on the same phrase (“complete, integrated documents”) in Tompkins’ Opinion, and appears to paraphrase Waxman:

Rather than being “complete, integrated documents,” the leases attach without full explanation the entirety of the 1966 leases and do not include an integration clause that states that the 2004 lease forms are the complete expression of the parties’ agreement. These facts alone warrant an examination of extrinsic evidence to determine the intent of the parties. (p. 10)

Here, in a footnote (number 50), Jorjani cites a 1999 Second Circuit case Waxman uses in his letter (p. 9): Starter Corp. v. Converse, Inc.. “When a contract lacks an express integration clause [courts] must ‘determine whether the parties intended their agreement to be an integrated contract by reading the writing in light of the surrounding circumstances.” That’s Waxman. Jorjani cites the exact same sentence, using brackets, as Waxman does, to substitute “courts” for “district court” in the original text, and putting the word “must” in italics for emphasis.

jorjaninote50

That two knowledgeable lawyers are appealing to the same legal precedents might not be all that surprising. But it seems pretty clear that this citation, too, is part of a disconcerting pattern.

None of this goes directly to the question of legal merits, or which reading of the Twin Metals leases should or eventually will prevail. Yet something here is seriously amiss. The blueprint followed by the Principal Deputy Solicitor at the Department of Interior to reverse protections for the Boundary Waters appears to have first been drawn by the attorney for a Chilean mining conglomerate. That should raise some questions about ethical conduct, about revolving door access and undue influence, and about whether the opinion Jorjani released in December of 2017 should be allowed to stand.

You can read other posts on the Boundary Waters Reversal here.

Sonny Perdue “Broke His Word” on the Boundary Waters

9 Replies

Representative Betty McCollum said last week that Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue had broken his word and betrayed his responsibility to care for public lands.

She made these remarks in response to Perdue’s cancellation of the two-year environmental review of the mining withdrawal of Forest Service lands adjacent to the Boundary Waters.

McCollum called out this exchange with Perdue on May 25, 2017.


(A transcript of the exchange may be found here).

It’s interesting, and in hindsight it’s perhaps telling, that Perdue answers before US Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell can. Just about five months earlier, in December of 2016, Tidwell had stated unequivocally that allowing the Twin Metals mine would likely result in acid mine drainage to the Boundary Waters and the surrounding watershed — “an unacceptable risk.” But before Tidwell has a chance to answer — and presumably walk the committee through these findings — his new boss takes it upon himself to respond.

Perdue right away reassures McCollum and other members of the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee that he and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had “already met about this,” and they had agreed that “none of us, I’m not smart enough to know what to do without the facts base and the sound science, and we are absolutely allowing [the study] to proceed.” But despite this pledge, his posturing before the committee (“the buck stops here”), and his invocation of the “Hippocratic oath: first of all, do no harm,”

Secretary Perdue broke his word, bending to political pressure from a foreign mining company and abandoning sound science to give a green light to toxic sulfide-ore mining in the watershed that feeds the BWCA. Like the President he serves, Sec. Perdue’s word cannot be trusted.

McCollum’s statement continues:

The Trump Administration’s abandonment of the Rainy River Watershed mining withdrawal study is a politically-motivated and callous betrayal of their responsibility to care for our public lands. It completely disregards the scientific evidence that sulfide-ore mining in the watershed will cause irreparable harm to the pristine wilderness of the Boundary Waters. The Trump Administration is eliminating sound science from the equation in order to ram through a destructive giveaway to their friends at a foreign-owned mining corporation.

McCollum understood back in 2017 that Perdue was “receiving pressure from the mining industry.” Along with the Department of the Interior, the Executive Office of the President, and members of the House and Senate, the new Secretary of Agriculture was already being lobbied on the Twin Metals mineral leases. Lobbying reports filed by WilmerHale indicate that an inter-agency, full court press was already underway as early as the first quarter of 2017, even earlier than agency calendars or the timeline I have put together from them indicate.

So it’s hard to credit Perdue’s representations to the House committee in May of 2017 that when he and Zinke met to discuss the Twin Metals mineral leases, they agreed that they were not the smartest guys in the room, and they should wait to have all the facts before rushing headlong into any decisions. It now appears their minds were already being made up for them.

Postscript. 15 September 2018. Some notes on the Zinke-Perdue meeting in this Twitter thread.

 

A Second Boundary Waters Reversal, And Its Connection to the First

Leave a reply

Last week, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced that the USDA would cut short a Forest Service environmental study of the risks posed by sulfide mining in Superior National Forest, near the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota. The study, which was launched only at the very end of 2016, “did not reveal new scientific information,” Perdue asserted. Those familiar with Perdue’s efforts to slash funding for research at USDA will not be surprised that the Secretary appeared, on this occasion, to demonstrate little regard for science and the time it takes to do good science.

Perdue offered vague reassurances that we can “protect the integrity of the watershed and contribute to economic growth and stronger communities.” After all, the statement goes on to say, northern Minnesota “has been mined for decades and is known as the ‘Iron Range’ due to its numerous iron mines.” That’s certainly true, and it will probably play to the pride people on the Iron Range take in their heritage; but Perdue never once mentions the kind of mining that is now under consideration — copper and nickel mining, or sulfide mining — and the enormous risks sulfide mining always presents. In fact, his statement does everything possible to sidestep the issue and conflate iron and non-ferrous mining.

The announcement was misleading, and it was all but lost amid the very loud noise created by the Anonymous Op Ed that had come out in the New York Times the day before. It is, however, consequential. Dan Kraker of Minnesota Public Radio rightly characterized Perdue’s announcement as “the Trump administration’s second major reversal of decisions made on mining in the Superior National Forest” — the first being the December 2017 legal memorandum on the renewal of Antofagasta’s mineral leases in Superior National Forest discussed in previous posts.

The two reversals are obviously connected and coordinated. Exactly how might be a little harder to say. We can start to trace their connection as early as 22 August 2017, when Department of Interior Principal Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani holds a meeting with two White House officials. The topic: “Minnesota Project.” Here is the calendar entry for that meeting, which I’ve now added to the Twin Metals timeline:

MinnesotaProject

The apparent purpose of this meeting was to bring the White House, specifically the Office of the General Counsel and the Executive Office of the President, into the loop, or to provide the White House with an update on efforts to reverse this policy of the Obama administration.

The meeting included Michael J. Catanzaro, who was at the time Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Energy and Environmental Policy. He is profiled on DeSmog. His lobbying for oil and gas companies and his work with Senator Jim “Snowball” Inhofe and climate change denial campaigns are detailed there. Catanzaro stepped through DC’s revolving door and returned to his lobbying firm (CGCN Group) in April of this year.

The other White House official in that meeting was Stephen Vaden, who in August of 2017 was serving as Principal Deputy General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Vaden had also been a member of the Trump “beachhead team” at USDA. These teams were sent in to sabotage regulatory agencies and, as Steve Bannon put it, deconstruct the administrative state.

One month after this meeting, in September of 2017, Vaden would be officially nominated to become General Counsel at USDA. Legal staff at USDA did not exactly greet the nomination with enthusiasm. According to Politico, morale “plummeted.” There were concerns about Vaden’s lack of managerial experience, his hostility to unions, and his previous work for the Judicial Education Project on behalf of discriminatory Voter ID laws — which turned out to be the main focus of his 2017 nomination hearing. Vaden is still awaiting full confirmation in the Senate, but he is busy working at USDA and would no doubt have briefed Secretary Perdue on this matter.

So the meeting where these two Boundary Waters reversals connect comes a little more clearly into focus: Jorjani, with his strong ties to the Koch Institute, Catanzaro, an energy lobbyist hostile to science, and Vaden, with sketchy views on labor unions and voting rights, talking about a Chilean conglomerate’s mining leases in Superior National Forest.

Twin Metals At Interior – A Timeline

30 Replies
March 8, 2016 Department of Interior Solicitor Hilary Tompkins issues an ‘M Opinion’ providing the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management discretion to grant or deny Twin Metals Minnesota lease renewal application.
July 1, 2016 Seth P. Waxman of Wilmer Hale writes to Solicitor Tompkins on behalf of Twin Metals, arguing that her Opinion was arrived at erroneously and should be withdrawn. (For more on Waxman’s letter, see this post.)
September 12, 2016 Antofagasta subsidiaries Twin Metals Minnesota and Franconia Minerals file a complaint in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota, asserting the non-discretionary “right to successive renewals” of mineral leases in Superior National Forest.
December 14, 2016 US Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell issues a decision that the Forest Service will not consent to renewal of the Twin Metals mineral leases in Superior National Forest.
December 15, 2016 After the Forest Service notifies the Bureau of Land Management that it does not consent to the renewal of Twin Metals mineral leases in Superior National Forest, the Obama administration releases Memo M-37036, denying renewal of Twin Metals leases. Tracy DC Real Estate, Inc. formed in DC by Luksic’s lawyers.
December 22, 2016 Tracy DC Real Estate Inc. purchases the Kalorama Triangle mansion at 2449 Tracy Pl NW. [For this part of the story, see this post.]
January 3, 2017 First news reports that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are moving into the Kalorama mansion.
January 4, 2017 Official sale date entered for the Kalorama mansion.
January 20, 2017 Reince Priebus issues the Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies.
January 25, 2017 Staff at Interior meet to discuss a correction to the Federal Register regarding the proposed two-year Superior National Forest mineral withdrawal.
January 27, 2017 Daniel Jorjani forwards a memo on the Federal Register correction to Katharine MacGregor and Kathleen Benedetto: “FYI re Twin Metals”
January 30, 2017 Acting BLM Director Jerome Perez forwards a list of proposed segregations and withdrawals in response to Katharine MacGregor’s request, “last week.”
February 2, 2017 Kristin Ball, Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management, prepares an Information/Briefing Memorandum for Katherine MacGregor, Assistant Secretary of Land and Minerals Management. Subject: Application for Withdrawal, Superior National Forest, Minnesota
February 7, 2017 Michael Nedd of the Bureau of Land Management forwards a briefing paper “previously used to brief the DOI leadership” to staff; cc: Karen Hawbecker and Aaron G. Moody in the office of the Solicitor; “as discussed, we would appreciate you all working together to come up with an updated BP with respect to Withdrawal options.”
February 9, 2017 email, Karen Hawbecker to Jack Haugrud, includes a “briefing paper to introduce the topic of the Twin Metals litigation to the SOL transition team.”
A paper prepared by Elena Fink of the Bureau of Land Management “options for addressing the withdrawal in Superior National Forest” begins to circulate: forwarded by Karen Mouritsen to Karen Hawbecker. Another email from Aaron G. Moody to Jack Haugrud recommends that Interior “work off of” the BLM paper.
February 21, 2017 Antofagasta subsidiaries Twin Metals Minnesota and Franconia Minerals file a Supplemental and Amended Complaint against the Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management, Department of Agriculture, and US Forest Service charging that the Solicitor’s M-Opinion, the Forest Service’s denial of consent, and the BLM’s denial of renewal were arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law, and inflict “far-reaching” harms.
February 22, 2017 A “fire drill”: the Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management has asked the Bureau of Land Management “for a brief ‘nutshell’ on the Twin Metals/Superior National Forest matter that can be given to the soon-to-be-confirmed Secretary [Ryan Zinke].” The paper will be included in Zinke’s briefing book.
February 28, 2017 Tracy DC Real Estate obtains business license for the rental at 2449 Tracy Pl. NW. The license expires on 28 February 2019. [update, 5 March 2019: it appears to have expired. For this aspect of the story, see this post.]
March 7, 2017 Associate Deputy Secretary of the Department of Interior Jim Cason meets with Acting Director of the Bureau of Land Management Kristin Bail “and one of the issues they will discuss is the Superior NF withdrawal,” according to a March 6, 2017 email from BLM’s Bev Winston to DOI’s Karen Hawbecker. Winston asks specifically whether Hawbecker’s staff has “prepared anything on BLM’s options with regard to stopping the withdrawal process?”
April 6, 2017 Kathleen Benedetto: Ext. Meeting Boundary Waters [with?].
April 10, 2017 On the calendar of Michael Nedd, Acting Director of BLM: “Mining in Minnesota.” Also on the calendar of Daniel Jorjani. Other attendees: Joshua Hanson, Briana Collier, Yolando Mack-Thompson, Karen Mouritsen, Alfred Elser, Ruthie Jefferson, Timothy Spisak, Marshall Critchfield, Linda Thurn, Lonny Bagley, Jerome Perez, BLM-WO MIB RM5653 Conference Room, Jeff Brune, Mitchell Leverette, Downey Magallanes, Aaron Moody, Shannon Stewart, Karen Hawbecker, Kathleen Benedetto
April 17, 2017 Antofagasta Plc CEO Ivan Arriagada sends a letter to Secretary Ryan Zinke. “Due to decisions made in the last days of the Obama administration,” he writes, “our past and future investment” — which he values at $400 million — “now hangs in the balance.” He hopes “to discuss a viable path forward” with Zinke, and requests an in-person meeting in Washington, DC, on either May 2nd or 3rd. “Rob Lehman at Wilmer Hale will be handling the scheduling of my meetings.”
April 18, 2017 Benedetto: Ext. Mtg. Twin Metals [with? Cf. Friday 16 June].
April 19, 2017 Benedetto: Twin Metals. On the calendar of Karen Hawbecker, Associate Solicitor, Dept. of Interior.
April 20, 2017 “April XX” draft of Information Memorandum for Secretary Ryan Zinke, outlining “”a set of options for reversing” BLM’s decision on Twin Metals, prepared by the Office of the Solicitor. (On the “XX” in the date of this draft, see this post.)
April 21, 2017 email from Karen Hawbecker to Jack Haugrud: Twin Metals “options” paper requesting feedback, “to make sure you’re ok with the approach we’ve taken.”
April 24, 2017 On the calendar of Katharine MacGregor, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management. Meeting with Timothy G. Martin of Wilmer Hale, on behalf of Twin Metals Minnesota. MacGregor has a call with Jorjani scheduled immediately after this meeting.
April 25, 2017 Kathleen Benedetto forwards a briefing memo [scroll down to page 182] on Twin Metals for Secretary Ryan Zinke’s 26 April meeting with Representatives Tom Emmer and Richard Nolan.
April 26, 2017 On the calendar of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke: meeting with Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN, 6th District) and Landon Zinda, legislative council; Representative Rick Nolan (DFL-MN, 6th District) and Will Mitchell, Legislative Director. A briefing by Kathy Benedetto and Kate MacGregor of the Department of Interior on the Twin Metals Leases.
April 26, 2017 Briana Collier, an attorney in the Division of Mineral Resources, forwards a briefing paper prepared for the State Department “ahead of an upcoming meeting this week between Antofagasta CEO Ivan Arriagada and the U.S. Ambassador to Chile,” Carol Z. Perez.
April 27, 2017 Raya Treiser of WilmerHale emails Catherine Gulac at the Department of Interior confirming a May 2nd meeting between Deputy Secretary James Cason and Antofagasta CEO Ivan Arriagada. The email includes “background materials”: a March 22, 2017 letter from WilmerHale’s Rob Lehman to Ryan Zinke; a July 1, 2016 letter from WilmerHale’s Seth Waxman to former Secretary of Interior Sally Jewel; and the July 1, 2016 Waxman letter to Solicitor Tompkins.
April 28, 2017 Benedetto Meeting with Rob Lehman, WilmerHale re: Twin Metals Minnesota. On the calendar of Gareth Rees, Executive Assistant at US Department of the Interior. There is also an entry for the same 11AM meeting with Lehman on the Deputy Secretary Conference Room calendar. Created by Deputy Secretary Catherine Gulac.
April 28 2017 Benedetto: Twin Metals briefing. On the calendar of Briana Collier. U.S. Department of the Interior, Office of the Solicitor. An email from Karen Hawbecker to Jack Haugrud on April 27 specifies the purpose of this meeting: “to get some feedback from [Benedetto] on the options we’ve identified for reversing action on the Twin Metals decision.”
April 29 2017 On the calendar of Katharine MacGregor: Meeting with Rob Lehman, WilmerHale re: Twin Metals Minneosta.
May 2, 2017 On the calendar of Gareth Rees: Meeting with Antofagasta plc re: Twin Metals Minnesota Project. Included in this meeting: Gareth Rees, James Cason, Katharine MacGregor, Michael Anderson, Kathleen Benedetto, [Linda Thurn], Richard Cardinale, Tracie Lassiter, Kevin Haugrud, Mariagrazia Caminiti, Karen Hawbecker. According to internal email correspondence on April 28, 2017, the Antofagasta delegation includes: Ivan Arriagada, CEO, Antofagasta plc; Daniel Altikes, Executive Director, Antofagasta plc; Rob Lehman, Chair of the WilmerHale Public Policy Practice; Andy Spielman, Chair of the WilmerHale Energy and Natural Resources Practice. An April 28th email from Karen Hawbecker to Lisa Russell at the Environmental Resources Division of DOJ indicates “this same group [from Antofagasta] may also have a meeting at the White House.”*

*Update: reporting in the New York Times confirms that the group from Antofagasta met with Michael Catanzaro, who was then top advisor on energy and environment at the Trump White House.
May 3, 2017 Benedetto: Meet and Greet with Representatives of Save the Boundary Waters.
May 4, 2017 On the calendar of Ryan Zinke: In-person meeting with Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue. Perdue will refer to this meeting in his 25 May appearance before the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee..
May 10, 2017 On the calendar of Sonny Perdue: phone call with Senator Al Franken to “fill him in on a mineral leasing issue in the Boundary Waters.”
May 17, 2017 Richard McNeer of the Solicitor’s office forwards to Jack Haugrud “a draft outline of an explanation for reversal of the M-Opinion” prepared by attorney Briana Collier.
May 25, 2017 Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue appears before the House Appropriations Interior Subcommittee. See this post for his testimony.
May 26, 2017 Ian Duckworth, Chief Operating Officer of Twin Metals Minnesota, writes to then-Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue asking “that the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) cancel its application for withdrawal and, in the event the withdrawal application is not cancelled, that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) deny the USFS’s application.” He also submits a four-page legal memorandum along with this letter.
Principal Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani call with Rachel Jacobson of WilmerHale, regarding a “DC Bar Event.”
June 1, 2017 email, Karen Hawbecker to Jack Haugrud: The White House “has expressed interest in the Twin Metals matter and Doug Domenich [sic] wants to talk to the WH today.” Kathleen Benedetto drafts a memo for Domenech on the Twin Metals Project.
June 6, 2017 Jeff Small, Director of the House Western Caucus, writes to Abbey Fretz at USDA about Secretary Sonny Perdue’s decision to let the “process play out” when it came to the proposed mineral withdrawal: “not encouraging for investors” and gives the impression the US is “not a good place to mine and do business.” Small refers her to Timothy Martin at WilmerHale.
June 9, 2017 Benedetto: Chat w/Timothy Martin from WilmerHale, re: Twin Metals – Minnesota. On the calendar of Katharine MacGregor, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management.
June 13, 2017 On the calendar of Daniel Jorjani: “Lease cancellation meeting.”
June 14, 2017 Jorjani meets with Raya Treiser and Andy Spielman of WilmerHale.
June 15, 2017 In a draft reply to Twin Metals COO Duckworth’s 27 May letter complaining of the proposed mineral withdrawal, Karen Hawbecker directs Duckworth to meet with Vincent De Vito, the Secretary’s Counselor for Energy Policy. USDA is cc’d on the reply.
On the calendar of Gareth Rees: meeting with Jobs for Minnesotans.
June 16, 2017 Benedetto Ext. Mtg. Twin Metals – Bob McFarlin [at that time, Vice President of Public and Government Affairs, Twin Metals Minnesota].
June 19, 2017 Meeting w/ USDA and DOI on Twin Metals Superior National Forest. On the calendar of Katharine MacGregor and on the calendar of Michael Nedd, Acting Director of BLM.
June 19, 2017 Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani forwards a press release to Jack Haugrud: “Reps. Gosar, Emmer, Nolan and Westerman Urge Rescission of 234,328-acre Mineral Withdrawal and Renewal of Leases in Minnesota.”  Haugrud sends the item to Karen Hawbecker, with the note: “FYI, in case you have not already seen it.”
June 20, 2017 On the calendar of Michael Nedd: Follow Up on Twin Metals Superior National Forest
June 22, 2017 On the calendar of Timothy Williams, Deputy Director, Intergovernmental and External Affairs: meeting with Chad Horrell of DCI, on behalf of Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters.
July 10, 2017 On the calendar of Ryan Zinke: “Minnesota Briefing.” Later that day, Zinke meets with Dayton. According to journalist Rachel Stassen-Berger , a spokesperson for Governor Mark Dayton says he and Zinke “discussed the Twin Metals project, and the Secretary expressed his support for the environmental review process established by the National Environmental Protection [sic: read, Policy] Act (NEPA)”
July 24, 2017 Bureau of Land Management produces a briefing paper on the Forest Service’s mineral withdrawal application.
July 25, 2017 All Hands on Deck for meeting with Antofagasta Plc re: Twin Metals Minnesota Project. On the calendar of Gareth Rees. Included: Kevin Haugrud, Katharine MacGregor, Michael Anderson, Karen Hawbecker, Kathleen Benedetto, James Cason, Gareth Rees, Linda Thurn, Richard Cardinale, Tracie Lassiter, Mariagrazia Caminiti, Edward Passarelli, Michael Nedd, Daniel Jorjani.
August 6, 2017 Karen Hawbecker forwards a briefing paper “about the Twin Metals litigation in preparation for a meeting” with Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt. This may or may not be the same as the “Twin Metals Potential Scenarios for Lease Renewal” paper “with comments” she and Jack Haugrud discuss in August 6 and 7 emails.
August 9, 2017 Katharine MacGregor: meeting with Chad Horrell, Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters.
August 11, 2017 Twin Metals submits “comments” on the proposed mineral withdrawal of the Rainy River Watershed, Superior National Forest (as mentioned in a May 15, 2018 email from Twin Metals attorney Kevin Baker to Karen Hawbecker). These comments consist of two legal memoranda, one from Twin Metals VP of Legal Affairs and another from Twin Metals attorneys at Dorsey & Whitney LLP, arguing that the Rainy River Watershed mineral withdrawal is illegal.
August 22, 2017 Daniel Jorjani meeting on “Minnesota Project” with Michael J. Catanzaro, (White House, Executive Office of the President), Stephen Vaden (Office of General Counsel, Department of Agriculture).
August 24, 2017 Department of Interior hosts CEO Critical Minerals Roundtable
August 30, 2017 On the calendar of Vincent DeVito: Meeting with Tim Martin, WilmerHale
September 7, 2017 Internal meeting at Department of Interior on Twin Metals: Daniel Jorjani with Jack Haugrud.
September 21, 2017 Phone call: Twin Metals. On the calendar of James Cason, Associate Deputy Secretary of the Interior. James Cason with Associate Solicitor John Hay; Associate Solicitor, Division of Indian Affairs Eric Shepard; Deputy Secretary Catherine Gulac; Associate Solicitor Karen Hawbecker.
September 25, 2017 On the calendar of Josh Campbell, Office of the Solicitor: call with Tim Martin and Raya Treiser of WilmerHale.
September 28, 2017 Vincent DeVito meets with Daniel Altikes, Vice-President, Antofagasta Plc, along with WilmerHale’s Raya Treiser and Andy Spielman, Permitting Counsel for the Twin Metals project at WilmerHale. cf. June 15.
October 2, 2017 Secretary Ryan Zinke, Deputy Secretary David Bernhardt, Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani (sporting the title “Regulatory Reform Officer”) host representatives of oil, gas, and mining at an event called “Cut the Red Tape: Liberating America from Bureaucracy.”
October 3, 2017 On the calendar or “daily cards” of David Bernhardt: call with Congressman Tom Emmer. “Rep to call Gareth [Rees.].”
Senator Amy Klobuchar attends a “bipartisan” dinner at the Kalorama mansion, ostensibly to discuss criminal justice reform.
October 4, 2017 Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt briefed on Twin Metals.
Bernhardt attends the National Mining Association Board of Directors meeting at Trump International Hotel.
On the calendar of Gareth Rees: Office of the Solicitor meeting on Twin Metals.(Gareth Rees will have lunch with Bernhardt two days later, on October 6.)
October 12, 2017 Office of the Solicitor meets with Twin Metals Minnesota: mentioned in an October 27, 2017 email from Briana Collier to Karen Hawbecker and Richard McNeer of the Office of the Solicitor. Jack Haugrud sets the working schedule for producing a “Twin Metals M-Opinion Reversal Draft” for “4-6 weeks from when we met with Twin Metals on October 12th.”
November 7, 2017 Briana Collier forwards the Twin Metals leases to political appointee Gary Lawkowski, Counselor to Daniel Jorjani.

Jack Haugrud writes to Briana Collier, asking for documents that show “BLM intended to incorporate the terms of the 1966 lease terms into the 2004 leases.” On this exchange, see this post.
November 15, 2017 On the calendar of Vincent Devito: meeting with Raya Treiser and Andy Spielman, WilmerHale. See also: September 28, June 15.
November 17, 2017 Briana Collier is “working away on editing the Twin Metals opinion according to [Jack Haugrud’s] directions.”
November 18, 2017 Jack Haugrud to Briana Collier: “I didn’t realize until last night that Gary [Lawkowski] was working on his own draft” of the reversal. Haugrud sets out to reconcile this draft by a political appointee with the draft produced by Briana Collier.
November 27, 2017 Jack Haugrud emails attorneys at the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of DOJ a draft of the “M-Opinion that would reverse M-37036 and conclude that Twin Metals does have a non-discretionary right to a third renewal.” He asks for comments that week, as Acting Solicitor Daniel Jorjani “would like to issue the M-Opinion this week.”
December 13, 2017 Bob McFarlin, Government Affairs Advisor for Twin Metals Minnesota, writes to “Kathy” [Kathleen Benedetto, BLM]: he is coming to DC for a “quick meeting USFS Chief Tooke and would love to touch base. [Tony Tooke had succeeded Tom Tidwell on September 1, 2017.] I will be traveling with Twin Metals’ VP of Environment and Sustainability, Anne Williamson, who you met in Minnesota this past summer.” He asks that Mitch Leverette, Eastern States Acting Director, Bureau of Land Management, join them. After some back and forth, it’s decided DMR [=Division of Mineral Resources?] should represent the Office of the Solicitor at the meeting.
December 15, 2017 Bob McFarlin meets with Kathleen Benedetto: “The litigation is not expected to be the topic of conversation,” according to an email from Justin Katusak.
December 19, 2017 The US Forest Service is “again pinging BLM” out of concern over what standards of environmental review apply to the proposed mineral withdrawal in Superior National Forest.
December 20, 2017 At the request of Interior Communications, Gary Lawkowski, Counselor to the Solicitor of the Interior, forwards a “one-pager of talking points on the Twin Metals opinion” to Daniel Jorjani and Jack Haugrud for review. He has put them together “given [or with an eye to] today’s focus on critical minerals.” In a second email circulating the talking points to Deputy Director of Communications Russell Newell, he elaborates: “One thing you all may want to note — the Forest Service has indicated that they believe there are potentially cobalt and platinum deposits underneath Superior National Forest.”
December 21, 2017 Email from Russell Newell: Plans for the Minnesota-only news release requested by BLM on the forthcoming opinion are cancelled, and the Department will comment “if asked.”

Some final revisions to the M-Opinion draft: difficulties finding the correct Weeks Act citation for the paragraph about Statutory Authority (on p. 2 of the issued opinion); reworking of footnotes for the section on lease renewals (pp. 11-13) arguing that BLM renewed the leases in 1989 and 2004 under the 1966 terms. One footnote in particular — number 65 in this near-final draft — “raises issues we do not want to address.”

On the calendar of Timothy Williams: “Quick huddle” in the office of Todd Wynn, Director of the Interior Department’s Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs regarding Twin Metals, MIgratory Bird Treaty Act, and signing of Secretary’s Order. In attendance: Stephen Smith, Cynthia Moses-Nedd, Jason Funes, Timothy Williams, and Todd Wynn.
December 22, 2017 Principal Deputy Solicitor Jordan releases Memo M-37049, allowing Twin Metals to renew its leases of Superior National Forest lands.
3:17PM email from Jack Haugrud to Solicitor’s office: “Just got a call from Raya [B. Treiser] at Wilmer[Hale]. Twin Metals is moving today to dismiss their case against us.”
3:44PM Upon hearing that Governor Dayton issued a statement calling the reversal “shameful,” David Bernhardt sends a mocking email to Daniel Jorjani: “He should call Ken Salazar.”

How this timeline came about:

Back in March of 2018, reporting by Jimmy Tobias gave us a little more insight into the Boundary Waters reversal. (My posts on the topic are collected here.) Through a records request, Tobias obtained the calendar of Kathleen Benedetto, Special Assistant to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

Described as “a fixer for the mining companies,” Benedetto now helps oversee the Bureau of Land Management. She has publicly taken the position that conservation of public lands is a barrier to “progress.”

The Benedetto calendar gave us a much fuller chronology and more detail than we previously had. Tobias identified at least six meetings or communications with mining interests on Benedetto’s calendar regarding the Twin Metals project in Superior National Forest, including the July 25th all-hands-on-deck meeting between high-ranking Interior officials and representatives of Antofagasta Plc. I subsequently learned that the group had met with Antofagasta earlier, on May 2nd, less than a month after Benedetto started meeting with mining company representatives.

When I put Benedetto’s calendar together with the Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani’s calendar, this timeline started to come into focus. Since then, I have been able to consult other calendars and received some materials in response to two FOIA requests. It is now clear that Interior was holding internal meetings about Twin Metals and the withdrawal of Superior National Forest lands in the first weeks of the new administration, and as early as February of 2017.

So there were many meetings about the Twin Metals project before Benedetto hosted a “meet and greet” with a Boundary Waters conservation group on May 3rd, 2017; and it looks as if the reversal was a done deal by the time Katharine MacGregor met with Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters’ Chad Horrell on August 9th.

At the very least, this timeline indicates that restoring Twin Metals “right of renewal” for their mineral leases in Superior National Forest was a priority at Interior from the moment the Trump administration took office.

The lobbying effort was a full court press, led by Raya Treiser, Rob Lehman, and Andy Spielman of WilmerHale. Litigation counsel for Chilean conglomerate Antofagasta plc — Daniel Volchok, Michael Hazel, and Paul Wolfson — are also from WilmerHale.

Note: I’ll continue to make updates to this timeline as DOI releases more materials in response to FOIA requests.

Read more about the Boundary Waters reversal here.

Another Note on the Boundary Waters Reversal

3 Replies
Jorjani Calendar

A 25 July 2017 entry from Daniel Jorjani’s calendar shows a meeting with Antofagasta Plc on the Twin Metals project.

One point I hoped to get across in Monday’s post about the Boundary Waters reversal has to do with journalism, or, more broadly, with storytelling. Just to highlight: scandal-mongering that generates clicks doesn’t necessarily get at the more prosaic and more complex truth of the story, and may end up doing a disservice. In the case of the Boundary Waters reversal, it is tempting to focus on the story of Chilean billionaire Andronico Luksic Craig and his Washington, D.C. tenants, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Was Luksic Craig’s purchase of the mansion where Jared and Ivanka now live an opening bid? Was the reversal connected to the rental?

This story of the rich and famous still merits investigating, but it carries with it a whole set of ideas — exaggerated and somewhat cartoonish ideas — of what corruption looks like: foreign billionaires, mansions, nepotism, winks and nods (remember what Luksic Craig said about meeting Trump at the Patriots’ game: “lo saludé.” “I said ‘hi’”).  All of those elements are certainly in play here, and they are part of what makes this administration appear so unabashedly corrupt and downright villainous.

At the same time, the story of Luksic Craig and his D.C. tenants could turn out to be a red herring, or what nowadays people call a nothingburger or fake news. Besides, there’s another, more immediately credible story that’s just there for the telling. What it lacks in tabloid glamour it makes up for with evidence. It unfolds among the banalities of meeting rooms, conference calls, memos, and after work events. This is the story Jimmy Tobias pursues in an excellent piece in the Pacific Standard, which I had not read before writing my post (and which, after reading, I linked to in a postscript).

Tobias beat me to the punch on the FOIA request, and obtained Principal Deputy Solicitor Daniel Jorjani’s calendar from May through December of 2017. He identifies two meetings about the Twin Metals project. The first is on June 14, 2017, with Raya Treiser and Andy Spielman of WilmerHale, the law and lobbying firm, on behalf of Antofagasta Plc.

Spielman is the Chair of WilmerHale’s Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Practice, and his name appears on the calendar heading, so we know that this is a high priority matter for the lobbying firm and presumably for the Department of Interior. And Treiser comes directly from the Department of the Interior, where she served under President Obama. She helped to “streamline” permitting on large infrastructure projects, and worked on the reform of offshore drilling regulations and energy development in Alaska. Now, as her biography on the WilmerHale site informs us, she has “successfully leveraged her substantive knowledge and insight into government processes.”

The second meeting is directly with Antofagasta Plc: the Chilean mining company comes to the Department of Interior to discuss its Minnesota claim, and it appears the Department rolls out the red carpet. WilmerHale had done its work. In addition to Principal Deputy Solicitor Jorjani, thirteen administration officials are in attendance, representing the highest reaches of the Department of Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the Department of Justice. As Tobias notes, no conservation groups were invited to discuss the reversal with the Department of Interior. This was a conversation for insiders only.

At the center of this story is not a mansion, but a revolving door (and if you are not familiar with Bill Moyers’ short video essay on the subject, you should be). This feature of the story becomes even more apparent when we look at a couple of other meetings on Deputy Solicitor Jorjani’s calendar that Tobias didn’t flag but are connected with the Boundary Waters reversal. One is a Friday, May 26 call with Rachel Jacobson of WilmerHale, regarding a “DC Bar Event”; this call or this event might well have provided an opportunity to tee up the Twin Metals issue. It is the first contact WilmerHale makes with Principal Deputy Solicitor Jorjani— and who should they choose for that task but Jacobson, who held Jorjani’s job of Principal Deputy Solicitor under the Obama administration.

Then on Thursday, September 7th, when work on the reversal memo is presumably well underway, there is an internal meeting on Twin Metals: Jorjani with Jack Haugrud, who was Acting Secretary of the Interior until Zinke’s appointment, and Joshua Campbell, an Advisor to the Office of the Solicitor. Campbell is profiled here, on Western Values Project “Department of Influence” site, documenting the revolving door between special interests and the Department of Interior.

In these meetings, the public interest does not even come into play.

Postscript: Today, as I was writing this post, the Washington Post reported that the Forest Service will cancel a planned environmental impact study and instead conduct an abbreviated review of the Obama-era proposal to withdraw the Superior National Forest lands near the Boundary Waters from minerals exploration for up to 20 years. The story also appears in the Star Tribune. Things are moving fast now, and pressure is mounting.

The Political Project of MCRC v. EPA, 3

5 Replies

Third in a Series

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, pushing jobs.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, pushing jobs.

Sunlight and Skullduggery

When it comes to parceling out the land, water and future of the Lake Superior region to the highest bidders, few have matched the auctionary zeal demonstrated a couple of years ago by David Dill, a member of Minnesota’s House of Representatives. In the debate over the proposed Boundary Waters Land Exchange, Dill was among those urging that the state should exchange School Trust Lands in the Boundary Waters area for 30,000 acres of Superior National Forest. Since by law Minnesota would be bound “to secure maximum long-term economic return” from lands thus acquired, Dill proclaimed, “we should mine, log, and lease the hell out of that land.”

Dill understood this much: if there is hell to be found in Superior National Forest, there is probably no better way to bring it out.

The unanswered question in Minnesota and throughout the Lake Superior region is not, however, theological: it’s whether extractive industries and the developments they bring will actually deliver “long-term” economic benefit for the region, and not just a short-term spurt or boom, or another period of destructive plunder followed by long-term decline. That is not just a question up for debate by economists and other experts; it is, at root, a political question.

As I’ve suggested in my first two posts in this series, the complaint filed by the Marquette County Road Commission against the EPA is part and parcel of an effort to shut this question down, or exclude it from public consideration. This complaint is only incidentally about a haul road. It’s part of a political offensive that aims to stifle debate and hand the future of the region over to unseen powers. Those powers lurk under legal cover of the dark 501c4 “public welfare” organization funding the MCRC’s lawsuit against the EPA.

So with this lawsuit, the Road Commission pretends to political authority that goes way beyond building and maintaining Marquette County’s roads: it assumes the authority to direct economic development in Marquette County and decide what’s in the area’s best interest. In order to seize that authority, I’ve said, the complaint sets up an “anti-mining” straw man, and tries but fails to prove that the EPA had a “predetermined plan” to prevent the construction of County Road 595.

No surprise, then, that the argument gets especially tendentious whenever the complaint tries to demonstrate collusion or discover “anti-mining” attitudes within the ranks of the EPA itself; and where it comes up short, it raises questions about the motives and associations of those bringing these allegations.

Consider, for example, the report to Senator Carl Levin’s office by an unidentified “informant” (Exhibit 15), who alleged that at a meeting with “environmental and tribal groups,” EPA Regional Administrator Susan Hedman made remarks to the effect that:

1. the EPA will fight mining in Michigan,
2. that there will be no mining in the Great Lakes Basin,
3. that there was or will be an EPA sponsored Anti-Mining committee, and
4. that the KBIC [Keweenaw Bay Indian Community] tribe had received an EPA grant which [sic] they used the funds to sponsor an anti-mining activity.

The informant seems to have been lying in some places and exaggerating in others: Hedman claims she never made the remarks attributed to her. But the MCRC complaint doesn’t hesitate to repeat the informant’s false allegations, and it tries to build its case around Senator Levin’s staffer’s awkward summary of what she heard from an unnamed informant who proved untrustworthy in every particular.

True to pattern, the complaint casts both environmental groups and the KBIC as “anti-mining groups” as it doubles down on the informant’s lies. The detail about the EPA grants is wildly inflated. The EPA gave the tribe “hundreds of thousands of dollars,” the MCRC claims, even as the KBIC was “actively lobbying USEPA against local mining and against CR 595.” This turns the false report of an unspecified “anti-mining activity” to “actively lobbying,” and it neglects to mention that EPA grants to the KBIC are, in large part, to help the tribes cope with the lasting damage done by mining and industrialization. (In recent years, grants have supported things like a survey of tribal fish consumption habits to reduce health risks associated with contaminants in fish, or the tribal Brownsfield response program.)

The phrase “actively lobbying” is especially cheeky here, for a couple of reasons.

First, the Eagle Mine project went ahead without the full, prior and informed consent of the KBIC. A Section 106 hearing ignored testimony from tribal elders that the ground at Eagle Rock is sacred to the Ojibwe, and objections by the KBIC and the Ho Chunk to the location of the mine portal at Eagle Rock were summarily dismissed. Tribal appeals to the EPA went unheeded.

Second, if we are really going to start tracking lobbyists and money spent on lobbying efforts, then in all fairness let’s spread the sunshine around and give a full account of money and efforts spent actively lobbying for mining interests in northern Michigan and throughout the Lake Superior region over the last decade. Or if that is too arduous a task, a full accounting of the money behind this complaint would suffice.

The complaint also fails to mention that the EPA responded immediately to Senator Levin’s office with a full schedule of grants given to the KBIC and the charter of the “cross-media” mining group at EPA Region 5. Cross-media groups are formed to satisfy the Cross-Media Electronic Reporting Rule. The fearsome EPA-sponsored “Anti-Mining” group turned out to be a specter of the informant’s imagination, and really comes down to bureaucratic reshuffling in order to make electronic reporting easier. There’s just no red flag to raise.

Elsewhere, when the complaint tries to demonstrate “anti-mining” sentiment within the EPA itself, the best the MCRC can do is police tone. There is an EPA official who writes “sarcastically” to a colleague at the Army Corps of Engineers, and then there are a couple of sentences in a January 2011 email by Daniel Cozza, an EPA Section Chief. Cozza refers to Wisconsin as “the new front” and says that in a three-hour town hall meeting Governor Scott Walker was “pushing jobs” when promoting the Gogebic Taconite project.

I think the WI Governor’s additions to the Welcome to WI signs stating ‘Open for Business’ is a sign of things to come. I listened to the 3hour [sic] townhall meeting last night regarding the G-TAC or taconite mining project in the Gogebic Penokee range and sounds like they are pushing jobs.

This sounds pretty innocuous, and I am unsure where the offense is: “pushing jobs”? That’s a pretty apt description of the rhetorical tactics used to promote mining in midwestern districts and around the world for that matter. Job numbers are overstated, as Tom Power notes in his study of sulfide mining projects in Minnesota. In Wisconsin, Senator Tim Cullen, Chair of the Senate Select Mining Committee, said he was amazed that immediately upon signing a controversial mining bill into law in 2013, Scott Walker and his cronies were “telling the workers of Wisconsin, who need jobs, that the jobs are just around the corner….The people who understand the mining industry know the jobs are years away.”  Sounds like they were being pretty pushy to me.

Of course, “front” might suggest a battle or military campaign, or it might imply that Cozza sees himself or the EPA as embattled, fighting against the encroachment of mining projects — which of course the EPA is, and will continue to be if it is going to protect the environment against the resurgence of mining all around Lake Superior. Forbes Magazine, hardly a bastion of environmental activism, struck the same note when it ran an article on Gogebic Taconite’s Chris Cline with the title: “Billionaire Battles Native Americans Over Iron Ore Mine”; Dale Schultz, a Republican State Senator who broke with his party to oppose Wisconsin’s mining legislation, said his conscience would not allow him to “surrender the existing environmental protections without a full and open debate”: no one gasped in horror and astonishment at the white-flag battleground metaphor. Mike Wiggins, Chair of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, did not mince words and declared the Gogebic project tantamount to “genocide,” as it would kill the wild rice crop. The list could go on.

So the real objection is that some people working at EPA are not enthusiastically on board with the agenda of the mining company and its development plans for the area. They’re not supposed to be; they’re supposed to protect the environment. The complaint is still far from proving that the EPA itself, when making its specific determinations about CR 595, acted with bias or according to a predetermined plan.

It’s interesting, however, that the complaint should make an example of Daniel Cozza and his attitudes toward Wisconsin mining. Cozza has a long history with the environmental regulation of mining in Wisconsin, and he was working in EPA Region 5 when the Crandon Mine project unraveled, due to the inability of the mine’s backers, which included Eagle Mine developers Rio Tinto and Kennecott Minerals, to meet tribal water quality standards and deliver appropriate environmental assurances. Cozza is said to have caused “consternation” when he reminded Crandon Mining in a letter of its “duty to look at the cumulative economic and environmental impacts” of other mining projects in the region; and it was this big picture perspective that prevailed when Governor Tommy Thompson signed a mining moratorium into law in 1998.

To many people inside and outside the mining industry, Crandon seemed to signal the end of mining in Wisconsin, and there are still bitter feelings within the industry about the failure of the Crandon project. Having lost in the courts and the legislative arena, the industry and its backers resorted to other means, achieving their first big comeback victory in Wisconsin with Scott Walker’s 2013 mining bill.

By signing it, the governor also obliterated his past. He had voted for the mining moratorium in 1998 as a member of the Wisconsin Assembly. As governor, Walker worked to ease regulations, and did a decisive about-face during his 2012 recall election, when he received a $700,000 contribution from Chris Cline and Gogebic Taconite. That mind-blowing, mind-changing contribution came via the Wisconsin Club for Growth, a dark money 501c4 like Stand U.P., the organization now putting up other people’s money — whose? — for the Marquette County Road Commission’s lawsuit against the EPA. Corruption is in the cards.

Why the Whining in Virginia Matters in Michigan

2 Replies

I heard conflicting reports about uranium mining when I was last in the Upper Peninsula.

Some people said the prospect of uranium mining next to Lake Superior was imminent — and that was their worst nightmare. Others dismissed it as nothing more than a rumor, or a “scare tactic” by environmentalists to put the kibosh on other kinds of mining.

Just to be clear, there has been uranium exploration in the Upper Peninsula since the 1950s. The map of active mining, mineral exploration and leases put together by the Lake Superior ad hoc Committee, which I mentioned in a previous post, shows active exploration right now at two sites in the Lake Superior region. One is near the Crystal Falls State Forest area, southwest of Marquette, in the vicinity of the Michigamme Reservoir. There is also active uranium exploration on the Canadian side, just north of the St. Mary’s River, between Sault Sainte Marie and Lake Superior Provincial Park.

If either of those sites turns out to be significant, pressure will build quickly to mine. An article in today’s Times about uranium exploration in Virginia suggests the lengths to which mining interests will go in order to exploit these valuable deposits. The Times reports that Virginia Uranium has spent more than $600,000 on campaign contributions and lobbying since 2008. They expect a haul worth $7 billion. They’ve flown Virginia lawmakers to France “to visit a tailings storage site,” and do whatever else politicians do when on an all expenses paid junket to France. And that’s only the start of the lobbying effort, the payola and the pitch to local communities.

Some of it is subtle. Virginia Uranium positions uranium mining as a national security issue and itself as “a leader in environmental stewardship.” The first claim is dubious and the second is an utterly meaningless statement when you are out to mine uranium, but it’s one I’ve heard echoed by mining companies and mining proponents operating in the Upper Peninsula.

There are other telling echoes here as well: in Virginia there are roadside signs saying “Stop Whining Start Mining,” according to the Times. The same signs started to appear in the Upper Peninsula once the new mining got underway. Maybe the rhyme comes easily to those with a big appetite for mineral extraction and a low tolerance for all this mewling about the environment. But it’s interesting, isn’t it, and at least worth noting, that the slogan also appears on bumper-stickers for sale on the website of the Acert Group — a “coalition of concerned private citizens” working “together with uranium exploration and mining companies.”

Stop the Whining Start the Mining Bumpersticker

From what I have been able to learn so far about the Acert Group, they are usually busy advocating uranium mining in Arizona. But now it appears that their concern, or at least their sloganeering, might extend to other parts of the country as well.

Update (1 Feb 2013)

Yesterday, the Virginia legislature abandoned a proposal to establish state regulations for uranium mining (which would have been tantamount to lifting the moratorium). State Senator John Watkins, a mining proponent, has now asked Governor Bob McDonnell to take executive action and ask state agencies to draw up the new regulations (which would be tantamount to lifting the moratorium).

Watkins is said to be “reviewing the request”. Still, Cale Jaffe of the Southern Environmental Law Center calls this setback for Virginia Uranium “a resounding victory.”

“This is not just environmentalists,” Jaffe said. “This is small business owners in Southside, it’s farmers, it’s parents of small children, it’s community leaders, it’s physicians — all these disparate voices coming together.”

Apparently the “whining” in Virginia has become a chorus of voices. The question is whether Governor McDonnell is listening, or does Virginia Uranium have his ear?